1st Entry

My first week at the UNEP CAR-RCU office flew by and I have really enjoyed it so far. After a fairly painless trip into Kingston, I spent my first few days in the office orienting myself, getting to know co-workers, figuring out the routine, reading about the SPAW Protocol in order to be familiar with the material, etc.

On my 2nd and 3rd day I was able to participate in a Video Editing Training Program that taught important points in video production and specifically how to shoot visually pleasing video.

This was an excellent activity for me to initially work with my coworkers and thereby getting to know them while doing a fun activity. Later in the week I began to receive tasks that ranged from copying documents, filing, to updating the SPAW Factsheet. These tasks also helped me to figure out how the office worked and gave me plenty to do.

Challenges Faced It was difficult for me at first to orient myself with the filing system. As I searched for one small piece of information in the entire room I was overwhelmed by the sheer volume of documents that the office had on file. The interns have also had a universal problem of being unable to reach the website within the office which has made it difficult to reach some information on the office for research.

Lessons Learned This is my first experience in an office setting so the entire experience has been a lesson already. By doing some pretty extensive reading in the first few days, I was also able to learn a lot about recent projects and initiatives that have either concluded in the past few years or that are still ongoing. In addition, I have come to understand the filing system within the office which will definitely be helpful to me as my internship goes forward. As a bonus I was also able to learn about Video Editing which I can see myself using in projects that I will conduct in the future, if not during my internship then in further down the road.